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Amazon Prime Video, Super Mario Run, OnePlus 3T, and More News This Week

Amazon Prime Video, Super Mario Run, OnePlus 3T, and More News This Week

By Gadgets 360 Staff | Updated: 18 December 2016 15:10 IST

Highlights

Amazon Prime Video launched in India and a host of other regions
Mario is now available on iOS device near you
Pokemon Go finally officially became available in India

This week the headlines were dominated by a strange mix of Internet outages and payments failures at the start of the week, and then everything came to a halt thanks to a new video service, and a couple of games. Here's everything you need to know about the week that's gone by.

One of the biggest events to take place this week was the India launch of Amazon Prime Video on Wednesday. Included with a Amazon Prime subscription that costs Rs. 499 per year, Amazon Prime Video is available on Android, iOS, and via the Web on PCs.

While Prime Video launched globally, Amazon announced a number of India-specific features - Amazon announced 17 original series here, and the launch catalog shows a lot of Indian content including several exclusives. Funnily enough, if you're in another country, you can still use an Indian subscription to access your local content - this means that Americans can use this loophole to view Prime Video at under $1 per month - less than one tenth the local price.

Unfortunately, it's come to light that Amazon Prime Video is censoring content for India, and in a pretty heavy handed manner at that. In one instance, it cut out half an hour of a one hour show, because it included scenes with a car made of meat.

(Also see: Amazon Prime Video Is Hamstrung in India, and Amazon Won't Talk About It)

Meanwhile, Netflix announced this week that it's now the home to Shah Rukh Khan and Red Chillies Entertainment. The first movie from this partnership to come to Netflix will be Dear Zindai, which stars Khan along with Alia Bhatt.

If you're an iOS user, then the big news of the week was the launch of Super Mario Run. The auto-runner is free to download, though it requires you to pay Rs. 620 to unlock most of the game, beyond the opening levels. Overall, it is a lot like any other Super Mario game, with tweaks for mobile. Unfortunately, if you're an Android user, you will have to wait till early 2017 to play the game.

Aside from these two apps, there was one more that was in the news this week, as Pokemon Go - unarguably the most sensational mobile video game of 2016 - finally officially launched in India. The game is now available to download via Google Play and the App Store, as developer Niantic partnered with Reliance Jio to bring the game to India.

(Also see: Meet India's Pokemon Go Players Who Gotta Catch 'Em All)

As a part of this partnership, Reliance Digital Stores and company's select partner premises in India will appear as 'PokeStops' or 'Gyms' within the game from Wednesday, Reliance Jio said in its release.

"We are delighted to partner with Jio to launch Pokemon Go in India," John Hanke, chief executive officer and founder of Niantic, was quoted as saying in the release. "It's exciting to see Pokemon fans in India step out and explore their neighbourhoods in search of Pokemon and Jio's disruptive high speed 4G LTE Network will be an excellent way to experience the game," he said.

(Also see: Pokemon Go Advanced Tips and Tricks)

Among the launches this week, we saw the ZTE Nubia Z11 and the ZTE Nubia N1, both of which were launched on Thursday. The Z11 is priced at Rs. 29,999, while the N1 is priced at Rs. 11,999; both phones run the Nubia UI 4.0, based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The two phones both come with a 5.5-inch screens at a full-HD resolution, and 64GB of storage, but the Z11 has a 2.15Ghz quad-core processor and 6GB of RAM, while the N1 has a 1.8GHz octa-core processor and 3GB of RAM.

(Also see: ZTE Nubia Z11 and ZTE Nubia N1 First Impressions)

Aside from this, Lenovo on Wednesday launched the Lenovo K6 Note in India, which will be available in a 3GB RAM/ 32GB storage variant, and a 4GB/ 64GB variant. And on Thursday, the Moto M went on sale on Flipkart, a day after the launch event in Mumbai.

(Also see: Moto M First Impressions)

Also, the highly anticipated OnePlus 3T (Review) went on sale in India, for Rs. 29,99. The OnePlus 3T has minor upgrades over its predecessor, the OnePlus 3 (Review). OnePlus earlier confirmed to Gadgets 360 that it will "continue to sell the OnePlus 3 in India," which means both smartphones may be available in the market.

(Also see: OnePlus 3T First Impressions)

The OnePlus 3 was also in the news after Flipkart said it will offer the smartphone at a discount as part of its sale next week, a fact that prompted the OnePlus co-founder to publicly ask Flipkart co-founder what was happening, since OnePlus works exclusively with Amazon in India. Flipkart later confirmed the OnePlus 3 will be available at Rs. 18,999, though question marks remain about warranty and after-sales support that will be offered to Flipkart customers.

Speaking of Flipkart, there was a gruesome incident this week when a deliveryman working for the company was allegedly killed by a customer, who did not have money to pay for the phone he had ordered.

HMD Global also unveiled its first two phones, the Nokia 150 and Nokia 150 Dual SIM. Both are feature phones, and not the much anticipated Nokia Android phones. Nokia 150 and Nokia 150 Dual SIM come pre-loaded with Snake Xenzia, and the try-and-buy version of Nitro Racing by Gameloft2, says HMD.

(Also see: 5 Memorable Nokia Phones That Made History)

Other launches this week include the Gionee P7, at Rs. 9,999, the Panasonic P88, priced at Rs. 9,290, the Zen Admire Dragon, priced at Rs. 5,290, and the Swipe Elite Star, priced at Rs. 3,333.

And finally, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick joking offered to take up Indian citizenship to settle the question of whether or not Uber is "foreign-owned." Kalanick, who is presently visiting India, said both Ola and Uber are foreign-owned, and ruled out a merger with local competition, as it happened in China.

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Further reading: Amazon, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video Global Launch, Pokemon Go, Pokemon Go Reliance Jio, Super Mario Run, New Phone Launches